head to head · open source
conductor vs dbos-transact-golang
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,009 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped today. dbos-transact-golang has 833 stars, 73 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. conductor leads on adoption by 3,766% (32,207 vs 833 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; dbos-transact-golang is written in Go under MIT. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, dbos-transact-golang 9%. conductor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (durable-execution, orchestration-engine, workflow-automation, workflow-engine), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| conductor | dbos-transact-golang | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 833 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 73 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick conductor if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dbos-transact-golang if
- You want the dbos-transact-golang feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dbos-transact-golang fits your workflow better
About conductor
Conductor is an Apache 2.0 licensed, event driven agentic workflow engine written in Java that provides durable and highly resilient execution for applications and AI agents, aimed at teams running microservices, AI agents, and adaptive workflow graphs that need orchestration they can version, inspect, and recover.
read the full conductor overview →
About dbos-transact-golang
DBOS Transact: Lightweight Durable Workflow Orchestration with Postgres Documentation • Examples • Github What is DBOS? DBOS provides lightweight durable workflow orchestration on top of Postgres. Instead of managing your own workflow orchestrator or task queue system, you can use DBOS to add durable workflows and queues to your program in just a few lines of code. When Should I Use DBOS? You should consider using DBOS if your application needs to reliably handle failures . For example, you might be building a payments service that must reliably process transactions even if servers crash mid operation, or a long …
read the full dbos-transact-golang overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or dbos-transact-golang more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and dbos-transact-golang has 833. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and dbos-transact-golang free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dbos-transact-golang under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and dbos-transact-golang?
conductor is written in Java and dbos-transact-golang in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, conductor or dbos-transact-golang?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dbos-transact-golang if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.